watching is the aerial delivery of toxins from the helicopter. the helicopter is going to make flights over the forest at relatively slow speeds. there are going to be certified >> the baits, the drugged mice. just when you thought it was safe to trust nothing, the mice from guam restore our faith that sometimes the crazenist things in the news are the true ones. now it's time for "last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> the president wants every to know there are only 20 days left to purchase health insurance coverage that will be effective january 1st, and today, the president picked up one very happy customer.

>> there's a major new push to focus positive attention on obama care. >> more than a website. >> touting the improvements made to the site. >> that's what you'll hear from president obama today. >> the website is working well for the vast majority of users. >> it's not just a broken website. >> it's plagued with problems. >> this bill is fundamentally flawed. >> we're not going back. >> republicans have to answer for the lack of a plan. >> you got good ideas, bring them to me. >> we'll see. >> cricket, if you will. >> they are advocated for underinsurance. >> what's needed in the house is leadership. >> he presides over the least productive congress. >> the house continues to do its job. >> since world war ii. >> we've done our work. >> really? >> the american people want to pick their own type of health insurance. >> i'm absolute lay being offered competitive plans with what i have. >> more problems may pop up. when they, do we'll fix those too. >> the problems have made it

very difficult. they're working on it. >> after all that, the white house finally appear said comfortable enough. >> we're saying it's time. >> my main message today is we're not going back. >> the president has a message on health care. it ain't going nowhere. >> there are only 20 shopping days left to buy health insurance left on the federal exchange for coverage that will begin on january 1st, and the white house plans to spend every day until then highlighting the affordable care act. president obama kicked it off today. >> i have said very clearly that our poor execution in the first couple months on the website clouded the fact that there are a whole bunch of people who stand to benefit. now that the website is working for the vast majority of people, we need to make sure that folks

refocus on what's at stake here, which is the capacity for you or your families to be able to have the security of decent health insurance at a reasonable cost through choice and competition on this marketplace, and tax credits that you may be eligible for, that can save you hundreds of dollars in premium costs every month, potentially. more problems may pop up. as they always do when you're launching something new. and when they do, we'll fix those, too. but what we also know is that after just the first month despite all the problems in the rollout, about half a million people across the country are poised to gain health care coverage through marketplaces and medicaid beginning on january 1st, some for the very first time. we know that, half a million people. and that number is increasing

after day. and it is going to keep growing and growing and growing. >> the president told congressional republicans to give up their campaign to repeal the affordable care act. >> now, we may never satisfy the law's opponents, i think that's fair to say. some of them are rooting for this law to fail. it's not my opinion, by the way. they say it pretty explicitly. some have already convinced themselves the law has failed regardless of the evident. but i would advice them to check with the people who are here today and the people they represent all across the country whose lives have been changed for the better by the affordable care act. look, i have always said i will work with anybody to implement and improve this law effectively. you got good ideas, bring them to me. let's go. but we're not repealing it as long as i'm president.

i want everybody to be clear about that. we will make it work. for all americans. >> and the president asked for help. >> i'm going to need some help in spreading the word. i need you to spread the were about the laws, about the benefits, about its protections, about how folks can sign up. tell your friends, tell your family. do not let the initial problems with the website discourage you because it's working better now, and it's just going to keep on working better over time. every day i check to make sure that it's working better. and you know, we've learned not to make wild promises about how perfectly smooth it's going to be at all times, but if you really want health insurance through the marketplaces, you're going to be able to get on and find the information you need for your families at healthcare.gov.

>> joining me now, florida congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz, jonathan grubeman, professor of economics. he helped craft the affordable care act, and michael smerconish, an msnbc contributor. michael, i want to start with you. you have been struggling dealing with this affordable care act, trying to get coverage for you and your family. but it sound like you had something of a breakthrough today. >> i have had a horrific experience since october 1st, lawrence. in fact, i remember naively waking up at 5:00 a.m. on the day of the launch, thinking i would go on the site, explore my options, go on the radio and say here they are for my family of five. for eight weeks, could not get any satisfaction online until today. i'm online right now in real time, in fact, i don't think you'll bow able to see it too clearly -- >> hold it up, we'll try. >> all right, there are the 24

plans that are now available for my wife and me and our three sons. our daughter is about to hit 26, so she'll no longer be on the plan, but i can tell you i have 24 plans available to me. i'm in pen pep. we don't even have our own exchange. this via the federal exchange. they range on the low end, one of the bronze plans, $1,050.71. the highest of the platinum plans $2101.53. for sake of comparison -- >> michael, are those monthly charges for you and your family? >> monthly charges. those are monthly premium charges. so lawrence, call it either $1,000 on the low end to $2,000 on the high end, depending on what the deductible will be. these are with reputable insures, unless, blue cross, and aetna, and right now, health insurance for my family is

$2,246.90. so bottom line, 24 options, very competitive with what i'm now receiving. >> just one more thing, michael. the benefits packages you're looking at, are they the same as you had already had this year or are there improvements in the benefit packages? >> well, the platinum plans are comparable to what i have right now. if i go in a different direction and i look at some of the bronze plans and i've got nine different bronze plans available to me, then the deductible is going to be much higher. so i'm going to be paying out of pocket until i reach a particular threshold and then all of a sudden, the insurance coverage is going to kick in. so there's more choice than you could ever hope for, and i'm sitting here now chuckling because i'm saying, this is as far from socialism looking at 24 competitive plans with independence, blue cross, and aetna, as one could imagine.

>> debbie wasserman schultz, it sounds like you've got one happy customer. >> that's the important thing, now what michael has is a broad range of options with a minimum floor of benefits that a lot of people are finding are better than the coverage that they've had previously. and they're able to choose from plans like michael can, with a higher deductible, and they can pay lower premiums or they can pay a lower deductible or no deductible and pay a little more. but the important thing is you have a broad range of choices, that it's private market based insurance, that you have the option of comparing coverage side by side, and you have the most important provisions like insurance companies aren't in the driver's seat anymore and

can't drop you or deny you coverage, that you have basic preventative care that keeps you healthy, instead of just accessing the health care system when you're sick. that's going to bring down costs right there because people will have access to coverage who didn't have it before. >> jonathan, this is exactly what you were hoping to hear from consumer said when you were helping design this law, and presumably, what you heard a lot of in massachusetts when that law got up and running, but michael isn't exactly who this law was designed to help. he already had health insurance and could already afford it. he doesn't need a federal subsidy, which makes the application process more complicated and the approval process more complicated. where does the process stand tonight for those types of customers? >> it's still early. the relevant deadline for this is march 31st.

that's when everything has to be working to satisfy the original mandate. the point is it's still early. in terms of where it stands, we have to separate the shopping function of the website from the coverage function. what they have been working on is getting the shopping function working. people have a lot of good options and it's going to be really impossible to compare then without the website working. however, once they shop over the web, there's no reason why they can't enroll on the phone. now we can turn to enrollment over the phone. there still are some back-end issues to resolve, but the first step has been taken. >> michael, where are you in the enrollment process? are you still considering your options? >> yeah, there's a lot of information to digest, and a lot of it is complicated. i need a couple days to sort out exactly what plan best suits my family and me and then i'll pull the trigger on one of the plans. >> michael, as a consumer, you're the only one of us who has been on the website working as a consumer, you're a fairly sophisticated health insurance customer. you have purchased it before and

purchased it for your family. there's going to be a lot of first-time purchasers and evaluators going to the website. how do you think it's going to work for them? >> i think it's an intimidating process. the website i was able to access today was very navigable. i didn't need the income verification because i'm not in the league for a subsidy, but it was not an intrusive process. the only question i was asked about personal health had to do with my tobacco usage. i have a beef with that. i think if i'm answering about my cigar smoking, then somebody else's obesity should be of interest. my problem is i was so damn anxious to get onto this thing for the last eight weeks that i convinced this computer model that i was a fraud and i couldn't prove my identity sufficiently to get me to the next hurdle. the way i broke free of the log

jam was to withdraw my application, submit a new e-mail address, and start over again. once i did that, it functions well for me and it's functioned well all day long. >> lawrence -- >> go ahead, congresswoman. >> what i wanted to add is it is important to know that people who need assistance are able to get it. they can go down to their local community health center and speak to a navigator, someone who is trained in the entire affordable care act process of signing up. they can sit down and get some guidance on the side by side comparisons and get questioned answered. so this is a process that someone is not just left to fend for themselves. if they need assistance, they have a number of ways to get it. in-person assistance as well as telephone assistance and other types of informational

assistance as well. >> jonathan, take us back to the massachusetts experience when they initiated the experience there, and what was the website usage? how much of a factor was that in getting it started? >> it wasn't as big an issue. it's like the congresswoman was mentioning. we had a lot of use of navigator-like entities to help especially low income people to find their insurance options. a lot more use of the phone. what's more important is we really just weren't as focused on it in the early days because there wasn't this enormous opposition that was focused on every minute's numbers. we recognize we're in a long-run process and we didn't focus that much on who was using the web and who was want in the first few month. the relevant point was the end of the year who signed up. it's great the website is rolling forward, but the timeframe is not to worry about what is happening today. it's by the time we get to the enrollment deadline, folks can use the website and enroll, use the navigators and the various

resources available to enroll in the right plan. >> michael, you have been through eight weeks of struggle. you seem to be in a good spot with the website working for you at this stage. if it continues to go smoothly and you make your enrollment decision and the rest of the process goes smoothly, how are you going to feel about this, say, around valentine's day? >> i think what it forces you to do, when you become knowledgeable about what the program consists of, you start to become more cost conscience. as one who has always been privileged, i always had health insurance provided by my employer, i just wanted to know, am i covered? from that point forward, i would pay whatever the co-pays would be. i'm now much more focused on what i'm getting in terms of the dollar expended and i'm hoping long-term, what it will do is make us more mindful of the costs and get away from the

mindset of what do i care? i have coverage. >> he's also no longer at the mercy of the insurance company. the insurance company is no longer in the driver's seat, deciding whether he's healthy enough to cover, deciding whether or not they're going to exclude a specific problem that michael or his family member might have and not cover that particular illness or malied. he's able to get preventative care without a co-pay so his family can stay healthier. he's able to make sure that his young adult kids can stay on his plan until they're 26. if he's a senior citizen, he's able to get prescription drug coverage that is more affordable. there's so much more that allows people to stay healthier, have more comprehensive coverage, higher quality, and for the

overwhelming majority of americans, it's more affordable, also. >> thank you very much for your invaluable consumer input. thank you, michael. >> thank you. coming up, last night, we told you about three black high school athletes who were arrested in rochester, new york, for the crime of waiting for their school bus. today, prosecutors followed the advice they got on the program last night and they dropped the charges. in the nation, we know how you feel about your car. so when coverage really counts, count on nationwide insurance. because what's precious to you is precious to us. ♪ love, love is strange just another way we put members first. because we don't have shareholders.

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remember the debt ceiling crisis? i think you do. well, one of the ideas suggested for president obama to bypass congressional republicans and raise the debt ceiling was for the president to order the treasury to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin. that coin would have been deposited into the federal reserve, and the trillion

dollars would be used to pay america's bills to avert a global calamity. the "huffington post" has learned that the white house had the president's top lawyers actually look into the legal justification for making the $1 trillion coin under a law that allows the treasury to mint currency of any denomination. the white house admitted to the legal memos, but they were determined too sensitive to be released, so we don't know if legally the white house actually believes that it could have used the coin option. the u.s. will actually hit the debt ceiling again on february 7th. up next, republicans admit that they have no ideas for making health care better. ya know, with new fedex one rate

you can fill that box and pay one flat rate. i didn't know the coal thing was real. it's very real... david rivera. rivera, david. [ male announcer ] fedex one rate. simple, flat rate shipping with the reliability of fedex. that seems to be the only alternative that obama care's critics have, is let's just go back to the status quo, because they sure haven't presented an alternative. if you ask many of the opponents of the law what they would do differently, the answer seems to be, let's go back to the way things used to be. i have always said i would work with anybody to implement and improve this law effectively. you got good ideas, bring them to me. let's go. >> joining me now, jonathan capeert, msnbc contributor.

and here with me, steve schmidt, senior adviser to the mccain '08 presidential campaign. let's listen to what john boehner had to say today about health care reform republican style. >> when you look at obama care, what you see is a government-centered health care delivery system. that's not what the american people want. the american people want to pick their own type of insurance, their own doctor, their own hospital. that's what a patient-centered health care system looks like. >> will that be up for a vote in 2014, a plan like that? >> will that be up in 2014? >> we'll see. >> steve schmidt, the guy can't even take the question seriously. the republicans in the house would vote on anything involving health care from their side, an idea from their side. >> it's interesting, one of the founders of the democratic leadership council out with a

book today that charts bill clinton's rise to power. when you look at bill clinton coming to power after three disastrous elections where the democratic party was viewed as unelectable by a lot of the country, it was fueled by ideas, by platform, by a vision of where to lead to reinvent the party. and you see the great deficit in those remarks by the speaker that the congressional wing of the republican party has in the eyes of the american people, absolutely bereft of ideas. i'm not a fan of the affordable care act, but my party has no solutions to deal with what's a real issue. no working person in this country, for example, should lose their house, go bankrupt, because their kid breaks their leg or their spouse gets leukemia, so republicans, who were once the party of ideas, during the regan era, through the 1990s along with president clinton, we have collapsed as far as our ability to be policy entrepreneurs. that's the great challenge if we're to be successful in 2016, to have candidates to break

away, put forward ideas about economic growth, health care, and ideas that americans are focused on. >> jonathan, you wrote a great piece today about the republican party basically being dead to the ideas. the thing that strikes me about the video that we saw, it's one thing for john boehner to not really have any health care proposal and rattle off platitudes about the way health care should be. it's quite another for him to not be able to keep a straight face publicly when asked a question about will you ever vote on anything that you just said. >> right, right, and you know, steve just talked eloquently

about sort of the vacuum of ideas from the republican party on what to do about health care reform. the thing i found interesting about what speaker boehner said came before he said, you know, wait and see or time will tell. it was, a patient-centric health care system, and all the things he rattled off, i sat there and thought, how is what speaker boehner talking about different from what michael just talked about in the very first segment where he talked about the 24 plans he gets to choose from and the doctors, spending all this time, figuring out how he the patient, the consumer, is going to avail himself of this new health care law. you know, it's almost -- it's painful to watch speaker boehner try to pretend like he's leading a national -- a national party leading, you know, just leading, i guess is the word i'm trying

to focus on. because where you have the president trying to make sure that something is available to the american people that they clearly want, given the traffic on healthcare.gov, meanwhile, he has an opposition that's trying mighty hard, has voted more than 46 times to not only prevent him from doing, but to repeal it, and as steve talked about, have nothing in the alternative to present once they do successfully repeal it, which they won't. >> president obama said something today that builds on your point, steve. >> if despite all the millions of americans are benefitting from it, you think the law is a bad idea, you have to tell us what you would do specifically to cut costs, cover more people, make it more secure, you can't say it was working with 41 million people without health

insurance. you can't just say the system was working when you had a whole bunch of people who thought they had decent insurance and when they got sick, it wasn't there for them, or they were left in tens of thousands of dollars in out of pocket cost that were impossible to pay. >> that's your point, that this republican party is no longer willing, even at the fringes of the republican party, to talk about those kinds of issues. >> there's no argument about what the president said. clearly, the american health plan wasn't working, from an inflation perspective, the fact there were 41 million people uninsured. the complaint is this is a 100% solution. to pretend that isn't a problem is absurd. you see him getting on the high ground at the expense of the republicans. >> thank you both for joining me

tonight. coming up in tonight's rewrite, if it's december, you know what bill o'reilly is talking about, the war on christmas. the only war bill o'reilly is willing to fight is in tonight's rewrite. and next, prosecutors in rochester, new york, dropped charges today against three black high school students arrested for loitering while they were actually waiting for their school bus. it sounds like those prosecutors were watching this program last night. people don't have to think about where their electricity comes from. they flip the switch-- and the light comes on. it's our job to make sure that it does. using natural gas this power plant can produce enough energy for about 600,000 homes. generating electricity that's cleaner and reliable, with fewer emissions-- it matters. ♪

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the district attorney in rochester, new york, followed the advice she was given on this program last night by a former upstate new york federal prosecutor. >> now to a developing story here in the city of rochester. unfair and out of line, that's what three teenerize calling their recent arrest. >> arrested in rochester, new york, last week, while committing the crime of waiting while black. >> their families athey have never been in trouble before and they shouldn't be in trouble now. >> they are members of the edison tech high school

basketball team who were waiting for their school bus to take them to a scrimmage basketball game on wednesday morning. at 8:43 a.m., they were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for obstructing pedestrian traffic on this sidewalk. >> we tried to tell them that we were waiting for the bus, but we were catching the yellow bus. they didn't care. >> these young men were doing nothing wrong. nothing wrong. they did exactly what they were supposed to do. and still, yet, they get arrested. >> under federal civil right laws there have been cases in the second circuit that have gone a lot further. if i was a law enforcer, i would think about dismissing charges. >> today, the monroe county district attorney said in a statement after reviewing the facts associated with these arrests, i have decided to dismiss the charges in the interest of justice. joining me now is james peterson, associate professor of english at lehigh university.

also an msnbc contributor. this looked like the outcome that had to happen, after our program last night, the mayor of rochester came out against this. i was deliberately on this show last night doing everything i could, including booking dan french, to push this prosecutor back and to push the police back on this arrest. >> that's right, and listen, kudos to you, your show, and your producers for making this national news. we have to give credit where it's due. really important here, lawrence. i'm teaching a class right now in black prison narrative. i'm studying michelle alexander and the narratives about prison systems in the united states, and we have a really aggressive criminal justice system that is racially biased, profiles people of color, women of color, and at the end of the day, we have to have media and other institutions step up and shine a

light on it, because these three young men, thank god, are going to be exonerated for doing nothing, but unfortunately, the aggressiveness filters too many people into it who can't get out of it, who can't go on the lawrence o'donnell show and say this is wrong. this is a key issue, mass -- that's where it lives and breathes. at the end of the day, those police officers thought they were doing their job when they saw those young men. and this goes back to like the black codes. it goes back to moments in history that we look back on and say, wow, we don't want to be that america. we are that america. >> you know, technology plays such a role in this. when you think about the rodney king case, the reason we knew

about it was the then relatively new technology of home video. the reason this got national attention, these cases you know happen all over the country, no national attention. odd raw mcdonald tweeted about this story yesterday. that's how i found out about it, following her tweet. from twitter, it made its way into a national television program you know they were watching, because when the former u.s. attorney of the district comes on and tells you what he's thinking, they're taking notes. all of this happened because of the new technology we get to bring to the cases. >> frederick douglass's grave is in rochester. people think about social media and they dismiss it, like it's young people playing around on twitter and facebook, but there are social movements that occur on social media, and this is a great case in point. we can raise awareness around social injustice issues, racial bias, and we have media platforms to shine the light.

>> the bad actors in those places have to know that people are watching. >> they're watching. >> they're empowered. everybody is empowered with a video camera. everybody can tweet. >> and you're on twitter. >> the word can get out. james peterson, thank you very much for joining us tonight. coming up, the war on christmas is back. bill o'reilly's imaginary little war is in tonight's rewrite. [ tires screech ] ♪ [ male announcer ] 1.21 gigawatts. today, that's easy. ge is revolutionizing power. supercharging turbines with advanced hardware and innovative software. using data predictively to help power entire cities.

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one of the pope's bishops assigned to deliver comfort to the poor may have revealed a secret about pope francis. he told the associated press when the bishop prepared to head out at night into the streets of rome to visit the poor and needy on behalf of the pope, quote, there's a constant risk that he will come with me. end quote. when the reporter asked if pope francis was sneaking out of the vatican, the bishop smiled and said, next question. a source told the huffington post, swiss guards confirm the pope has ventured out at night dressed as a regular priest to meet with homeless men and women.

as archbishop of buenos aires before becoming pope, he snuck out to visit the homeless. up next, bill o'reilly, he's on christmas' side. announcer ] in your lifetime, you will lose three sets of keys, four cell phones, seven socks, and six weeks of sleep. but one thing you don't want to lose is any more teeth. if you wear a partial, you are almost twice as likely to lose your supporting teeth. poligrip and polident for partials seal and protect helps minimize stress, which may damage supporting teeth by stabilizing your partial. and clean and protect kills odor-causing bacteria. care for your partial. help protect your natural teeth.

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hands for holding. feet, kicking. better things than the joint pain and swelling of moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. if you're trying to manage your ra, now may be the time to ask about xeljanz. xeljanz (tofacitinib) is a small pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers have happened in patients taking xeljanz. don't start taking xeljanz if you have any kind of infection, unless ok with your doctor. tears in the stomach or intestines, low blood cell counts and higher liver tests and cholesterol levels have happened. your doctor should perform blood tests, including certain liver tests, before you start and while you are taking xeljanz. tell your doctor if you have been to a region where certain fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c,

or are prone to infections. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, and if you are pregnant, or plan to be. taken twice daily, xeljanz can reduce the joint pain and swelling of moderate to severe ra, even without methotrexate. ask if xeljanz is right for you. as soon as bill o'reilly finishes honoring those heroic pilgrims who settled the massachusetts bay colony by having his last piece of thanksgiving pumpkin pie, bill grabs his musket and bravely sallys forth to fight the war on christmas. >> if you're not going to say merry christmas and it's a federal holiday, i'm not going to buy the lamp. i'm nat small. >> that was general o'reilly fighting the good fight seven

years ago. this is the o'reilly factor's writers favorite time of year because they get to recycle a dozen years of war on christmas scripts. here's the recycled script o'reilly used last night. >> hi, i'm bill o'reilly. thanks for watching us tonight. the war on christmas centralizings. that is the subject of this evening's talking points memo. over the years, we have taken on the role of protecting the federal holiday of christmas. >> that's right, thanks to bill o'reilly, congress has not been able to pass that bill revoking the federal holiday status of december 25th. in fact, thanks to bill o'reilly, no one in congress has even dared to introduce that bill, but o'reilly knows it took congress over 80 years to make christmas a federal holiday, so he's not about to trust congress to hold the line on the war on christmas. >> president grant signed the holiday into law after congress passed legislation in 1870

recognizing its judeo christian religion. >> there was nothing judeo about congress making it law, but in the heat of war, sometimes you say things you don't mean. >> everything was swell until ten years ago when creeping secularism and groups like the aclu began attacking the christmas holiday. they demanded the word christmas be removed from advertising and public displays, and many people caved into that. now we have the happy holidays syndrome. >> obviously, cowering in fear of general o'reilly, the aclu says, in recent years, culturally conservative commentators have declared there is a so-called war on christmas and in many cases have claimed the aclu is leading the charge. this simply isn't true.

religious freedom is part of the right guaranteed to us all. while christmas displays are placed in front of homes and places across the country and while carolers go door to door, they say christmas is being removed from all public mention. the constitutional rights allow people to preach, sing, and celebrate christmas in their churches and with family and friends in public or private is well noted. the real question is not whether people can celebrate christmas. they most certainly can. but whether the government should be promoting religious beliefs and practices, it most certainly shouldn't. when the smoke of battle clears, christmas is completely safe. >> the ubserty of the situation was brilliantly parodies today.

the following christmas spension actually mentioned christianity. viewer discretion is advised. >> i guess that means viewer discretion is advised tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. on nbc. >> that is the iconic rockefeller center christmas tree, and she's basically ready. the lights are in place, and this year, we will help flip the switch. so join me and al and savannah and natalie tomorrow night as we light the tree. >> the name of the nbc special tomorrow night is christmas in rockefeller center. not holidays in rockefeller center. nbc has been broadcasting the lighting of the christmas tree as a live special for 16 years. and the rockefeller center christmas tree has been new york

city's best known christmas landmark for 81 years with no help from bill o'reilly. oh, and bill o'reilly's beloved pilgrims who he was celebrating on thanksgiving, yeah, they banned the holiday of christmas in the massachusetts bay colony in 1659, and they kept it banned for over 20 years. and bill, the aclu had nothing to do with that. ♪ hmm. mm-hmm. [ engine revs ] ♪ [ male announcer ] oh what fun it is to ride. get the mercedes-benz on your wish list at the winter event going on now -- but hurry, the offers end december 31st. [ santa ] ho, ho, ho! [ male announcer ] lease the 2014 glk350 for $419 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer.

the house of representatives passed a bill today. yes, the republican house of representatives, and the democrats voted for it. it was virtually unanimous, and it was not just any bill. it's a bill that bans certain types of guns. that's next. life with crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis

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let's us give you great rates and service. i'd like that. a new way to bank. a better way to save. ally bank. your money needs an ally. gives you a long-lasting fresh breath feeling. so you have the courage to jump in... go in for the hug... or make sparks fly. for a fresh breath feeling that lasts up to 5x longer, get scope outlast. the one and only vote that the u.s. house of representatives has cast this year on guns happened today. when it passed a one-sentence bill by voice vote to extend the 1988 undetectable firearms act for another ten years.

>> when we first passed the ban in 1988, it was a forward looking exercise because no one had been actually able to produce a gun that had no metal and therefore couldn't be detected. the only time we heard about plastic undetectable guns was in the movie "line of fire" where as you remember, john malkovich, one of the great bad guys, was seeking to kill the president using a gun made out of plastic so he could slip past the metal detector said. now because of 3-d detectors, anyone with $1,000 can make a version of these guns. >> senator schumer hopes to close a loophole to the fact that could make a illegal gun legal by attaching a piece of metal that can be removed to avoid detection. earlier this year, a man posted blueprints on line for the first

plastic gun. the atf showed guns they created using a 3-d printer. the first one exploded, but a second one successfully fired off eight rounds. joining me now, james cavagnaw. for this law, is a simple one-sentence extension of the law adequate, or do we need the schumer amendment. >> we definitely need the schumer amendment. it's the death of common sense that we're even debating we should have a law that strengthens our ability to prohibit the plastic guns. they have no sporting purpose. they're not a good self-defense weapon as they're unreliable. they're dangerous to the user. atf agents aren't holding it in their hands when they're shooting it. the only thing they're good for

is assassins, murders, maniacs. people who want to avoid security. >> we haven't heard from the nra on this one yet, but this is as much an element of gun control as anything else we have talked about. >> absolutely right. this is the kind of thing that gun laws need to stop. gun laws have been used over the coursef our history to evolve when technology evolved. the 1934 machine law act came into law, and they're not used in a lot of crimes because we cracked down on those. so this is another reason why technology should be looked at in the law and these things should be made like senator schumer says, metal permanently in the gun, heavy penalty said to violate the law if you do so. this is the kind of thing terrorists go for. >> on these plastic printers and

their capacity, so far, most of what they have been turning out melts or burns on the spot, but the idea that atf has been able to create one that fires eight bullets, that's a completely successful version of that gun for someone who wants to use it for one use. >> why would we as a nation allow people to make a gun that could be smuggled onto an aircraft, get into the prisons, hurt our elected leaders. why would we allow guns that have no sporting purpose, no legitimate purpose for self defense, no police or military purpose. why would we do that? we could easily make a law to stop this. this isn't a second amendment issue in my view. we should come together and say we're not going to put these on the street. >> the trouble with these guns made from printers is to really

control it, you would somehow have to get legislation that controlled the specifications of the printers. >> i think if we came together on it, we could even have software fixes that would maybe hamper or prevent of slow some of that stuff down. the real deterrent is heavy penalty, licenses, strict laws that prevent the use. it shouldn't hut sportsmen, shooters, gun manufacturers. it should help us from having to deal with this in an aircraft or hurting our elected leaders or some other disaster we don't need to deal with.

we can see it's going to happen. we should take the steps to do it right. >> thanks, james. chris hayes is up next. two days and counting. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in louisville, kentucky. let me start tonight with the big news. close to home news. and to this show. two nights from now president obama will be our guest. yours and mine on this show. he's agreed to sit with me before a big group of college students. that's right. the "hardball" college tour is back big time. and the biggest headliner, the president of the united states. we're going to be hitting my biggest questions with the president before the students of